The nature of product | Marty Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group
1. Sacred PM Access
Ensure you maintain direct, unencumbered access to users/customers, engineers, and stakeholders. These three types of access are critical for understanding problems, collaborating on solutions, and ensuring business viability; delegating them damages product innovation.
2. PM Self-Development
To be an effective PM on an empowered team, develop expertise in four areas: users/customers, product data, business functions (marketing, sales, finance, compliance), and the competitive landscape/industry trends. This comprehensive knowledge is essential for contributing valuable and viable solutions to the team.
3. Prioritize Solution Discovery
When the problem is already well-understood (e.g., by founders), minimize time spent on problem validation and maximize effort on discovering the winning solution. People ultimately buy solutions, and this is where success or failure is determined.
4. Experiment Empowered Teams
Propose a short-term experiment (1-2 quarters) to your manager to operate as an empowered product team. Frame it as a low-risk trial to demonstrate the value of this working model.
5. Transition to Problem-Solving
If given a feature to build, “reverse engineer” it by asking stakeholders about the underlying problem it’s meant to solve and how success will be measured. This shifts the focus from output to desired outcomes.
6. Learn Discovery Skills
Actively learn and apply modern product discovery skills and techniques from resources like “Inspired,” “Continuous Discovery Habits,” or “Sprint.” These tools are essential for effective solution discovery and are dramatically better than older methods.
7. PMs Responsible for “How”
Product managers are deeply responsible for how a solution is built, specifically ensuring it is valuable and viable, in collaboration with designers (usable) and engineers (feasible). This goes beyond merely defining what to build.
8. User Research for Problems
Conduct user research with a primary focus on identifying all the reasons users won’t use your product (evaluative research). This approach helps uncover critical flaws and leads to more impactful product improvements.
9. PMs Attend User Research
Product managers and designers must be present during user research sessions and product tests. Direct observation provides invaluable firsthand insights and ensures the research is directly utilized by the team.
10. Avoid Optimization-Only
Do not solely rely on low-risk optimization (A/B testing, tweaking existing workflows) for growth. Ensure your team also engages in “real discovery” to innovate and drive major improvements, as optimization alone won’t lead to significant innovation.
11. Gain Strategic Context
Empowered teams need to understand the big picture, including the product vision, product strategy, and how their work relates to other teams. This strategic context is crucial for making informed decisions and aligning solutions with company goals.
12. Delegate Non-Sacred Tasks
To optimize workload and focus on core responsibilities, delegate non-critical tasks such as project management, quality assurance, product marketing, or production operations to other roles. Ensure this delegation does not interfere with the three sacred PM accesses.
13. Beware Process People
Recognize that scaling with rigid processes (e.g., “repackaged waterfall” methodologies) can destroy a company’s ability to innovate. Instead, advocate for scaling through strong leadership and empowered teams.
14. Focus on Outcomes
In a real product team, success is measured and celebrated when the actual problem is solved and desired results are accomplished, not merely by the number of features released or outputs generated.
15. Recognize Feature Factory
Understand if your team is a “feature factory” (given prioritized features/solutions) or a “real product team” (given problems to solve and empowered to find solutions). This self-assessment helps clarify your current working environment.
16. Learn from Best Teams
When evaluating new product practices or tools, check if they are actively used by several leading product companies. This heuristic helps identify proven and effective methods rather than unproven theories.
17. Avoid Stakeholder “Disease”
Understand that an idea is a minor part of product development; the true “craftsmanship” lies in the discovery and iteration process of transforming an idea into a successful product. Executives often overestimate the value of initial ideas.
18. Seek Coaching/Mentorship
Actively seek out experienced coaches or mentors who can provide guidance and support in developing your product management skills and career. This personal guidance is a highly effective way to learn and improve.